he's not going to be using the 3600 for three years. thats where the phenom comes in.
i think (NOTE: "i think") that the phenoms are going to put a hurtin on c2d.
as far as 500 dollar budget builds go, i have a 3600 brisbane running on an evga 590sli mobo, with 2(3rd on the way) GB of xms2, a wd 160, a coolmax 550w sli psu, lg dvd rom, audigy sound card, logitech spkrs, a 19" benQ monitor, a cheap a$$ MS keyboard, a logitech g7, a wicked cool rosewill case, and 2 evga 7900gs KO cards. and there aint nothin wrong with it. as a matter of fact, i think it is better than running a higher end chip, because it runs so much cooler and stays stable with low voltage. and my computer crashes waaaaaay less often (really never at all) than my moms p4, which likes to crash after spending about two minutes trying to laod a program. i think you would be surprised to find that many of the people that you read about are proud oc'ers that dont take the time to do their homework and end up corrupting files and probably their registry along the way. if you do it right, and take time, and are careful, there is really no risk at all, IMO. who among us is not going to have upgraded our cpu's in 3-4 years? i'm on my 2nd in less than a year.
not bashing the c2d build either, its nice. possible that i would have bought one myself, except i really prefer AMD. lol that and i tend to avoid billion+ dollar companies that want to monopolize the entire industry in which they are involved, so they can make even more billions. cant forget that part, heh.

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"nagasama no longer drinks tecate, or streaks out of the night for anything, and he has a fine wife so he has no use for your girlfriend...she is safe..."

Well I'm not going to be getting this computer until probably December so if the Phenoms are released by then I wouldn't have to get the Athlon at all. Does anyone know if they will be released by December?